"Almost exactly two years ago my wife Suzi organized a dinner party for friends, here in Rome, to celebrate my 65th Birthday. Piero Garegnani was there and I had the opportunity: in a short speech at the end of the meal, to record my enormous intellectual debt to him. I had the opportunity both to say “thank you”, and to make clear that I really meant it.

It is no exaggeration to say that my encounter with Garegnani’s Ph.D. dissertation in the Cambridge University Library in 1970 shaped my entire view of what economics is about, how it should be done, and what it is for. I came to understand Piero Sraffa through the lens of Garegnani. I came to understand Keynes through the lens of Garegnani. And, as a result of many, often difficult, discussions with Garegnani, I began to clarify and understand my own thinking on economics.

In this lecture I hope to convey some of my initial excitement on reading that Ph.D. dissertation, later published in Italian as Il Capitale nelle Teorie della Distribuzione. And 40 years on, I will attempt to place the arguments of the Ph.D. dissertation in the context of Piero’s later work, and, on a topic that may surprise some of you, in the context of economic policy. After all, economics is not purely a mental like pure mathematics or chess. Economics is meant to be useful.

In developing the argument I will occasionally identify points at which disagree with Garegnani. When I first started putting lecture together I felt a little guilty about this. Am I taking advantage of the fact that Piero is not here, knowing, that if he were here I would have to defend myself against the toughest imaginable examination of the logic of my arguments? I think so. I know that Piero liked nothing better that a serious argument about economics. And I am unembarrassed about being critical, because it is Piero’s own work that forms the starting point of my criticism. As Sir Isaac Newton famously wrote: “If have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”."

To read the paper "The Theory of Value and the Foundations of Economic Policy” HERE or HERE